Asineops
Asineops | ||||||||||||
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Asineops squamifrons at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City |
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Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
Eocene | ||||||||||||
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Systematics | ||||||||||||
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Scientific name of the family | ||||||||||||
Asineopidae | ||||||||||||
Wilson, 1980 | ||||||||||||
Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
Asineops | ||||||||||||
Cope , 1870 |
Asineops is an extinct bony fish of unclear systematic affiliation. The only species of the genus is Asineops squamifrons . Their fossil remains were found in the North American Green River Formation .
features
Asineops was about 29 to 33 centimeters long and had a stocky body covered with round scales , a broad head with large eyes and a deep cleft mouth. The eyes were relatively large, skull bones and gill covers unarmored. The mouth was covered with thin, brush-like teeth. Fangs were missing. Hard and soft radiating parts of the dorsal fin were not separated. The anal fin had two spiked rays, the dorsal, anal and caudal fins were rounded. The number of Branchiostegal rays was seven. The sideline was continuous.
Systematics
The systematic position of Asineops is so far unclear. It is probably a primitive fish from the group of Acanthomorphata , the fish group with real, unsegmented dorsal and anal fin spines, but since Asineops has no recognizable characteristics of a fish order within the Acanthomorphata, it must be classified as incertae sedis (with unclear assignment) .
literature
- Edward Drinker Cope : Observations on the fishes of the Tertiary shales of Green River, Wyoming Territory. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 11, No. 81, Jan., 1869
- Karl Albert Frickhinger: Fossils Atlas Fish , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, 1999, ISBN 3-88244-018-X
- Lance Grande: The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time . University of Chicago Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0226922966
Web links
- † Asineops Cope, 1870 in the Paleobiology Database.